Contact lenses & Technology

A New App Could Detect Whether You're Peeping On A Stranger's Phone

Although there's no official data, it's safe to assume millions of people have peeked onto strangers' smartphones on public transit. Perhaps the only more disturbing fact about mobile phones in the modern era is that 75 percent of us use them while on the toilet!

Techies haven't told us whether they plan to address this "potty call" epidemic, but a few Google researchers are working on an app to identify pesky Facebook feed stalkers. This new app was recently unveiled at the 2017 Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) conference.

Software engineers Hee Jung Ryu and Florian Schroff designed this app using the latest advances in AI eye-detecting technology. Whenever the phone picks up a direct gaze from someone on the background, it will immediately alert the user. The phone detects people staring at the phone through the front-facing camera.

Ryu and Schroff said their app can pick up a person's eyeline within only two milliseconds no matter what the lighting conditions. They also say that this app can recognize a person's face within 47 milliseconds per face.

If you want to see more on this revolutionary app, check out this demo video posted on YouTube. The phone used in the demo is, of course, a Google Pixel.

So, anyone out there who has a habit of prying on other people's smart phones in public places, beware! This new app should be available to the public in the near future.

2017’s NIPS conference ran from December 4th to the 9th in Long Beach Convention Center at Long Beach, California. For more information on this annual meeting, please click on this link.